A blend of advocacy and (so to speak) sober reportage on an issue that’s only superficially whimsical.
An enlightening survey of 21st-century cannabis consumers, at an estimated 200 million strong.
British Columbia–based journalist Preston explains that although he was a “moderate toker” by local standards, his Rolling Stone editor perceived him as a “stoner dude,” and assigned him a story on the Canadian marijuana scene, which led to this study: “Pot lovers, psychologically landlocked by the War on Drugs, need to be reminded there’s a big ol’ world out there where the DEA doesn’t hold sway.” Preston modulates his pothead’s holiday with an alluring multinational slant—he narrates a journey through 12 countries (including Switzerland, Spain, Australia, Laos, Thailand, and the US), bookended by a local growers’ competition in Canada, and the infamous High Times “Cannabis Cup” in Amsterdam. Although Preston consumes much marijuana, hashish, kif, and sundry teas and baked goods during his travels, his observations stay thankfully sharp and lucid. Generally speaking, Preston discerns a subtle international watershed: while law enforcement in poorer countries like Nepal and Morocco ignore native cannabis consumers and tolerate (or exploit) the cash influx of so-called “drug tourists,” European nations (save France, Germany, and Sweden) are attempting to permit discreet particular cannabis possession without welcoming those same drug tourists. His jaunts through specific countries are always engaging, revealing the semi-organized underground communities necessitated by the herb’s illegal status. Back home in Vancouver, for example, a network of growers and seed/equipment suppliers pursue strains like “Bubbleberry” and “Pearly Girl” with gourmet zeal. In England, Preston follows the nascent “hempster” movement’s engagement with governmental agencies, a traditional gambit of European social activists. Elsewhere, localized irony abounds: in Muslim communities, liquor consumption is scorned over communal hash-smoking, while Holland’s tolerance of soft drugs incongruously results from that nation’s stolid conservatism. Beyond the endearing stoned camaraderie of Preston’s travelogue, he condemns pot prohibition with sound reasoning (e.g., that it encourages a criminalized black market) in case any social conservatives are reading, while his fellow travelers will enjoy knowing, for instance, how not to get hustled in Tangier. But the author also confirms there’s no alternative to getting hustled in America, courtesy of the taxpayer-financed, cannabis-focused atrocity of the drug war.
A blend of advocacy and (so to speak) sober reportage on an issue that’s only superficially whimsical.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8021-3897-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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